DeGods = Taco Bell, Liquid T-Bills, Steve Jobs’ Spirit & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week I’ve got these titbits for you:

• Attention Scarcity: What does Nikola Jokić have to do with DeGods?

• Fiat On-Ramp: Meso is about to significantly simplify fiat on-ramps.

• Solana Chai: Chai — T-bills — have landed on Solana.

Last week, I again highlighted the importance of marketing in web3/crypto.

To be clear, I define marketing as Philip Kotler and Clayton Christensen, not Frank DeGods or @ShiLLin_ViLLian.

Simply put, this is what I mean:

• "You have to start with the customer experience and work your way backwards to the technology."
  

• "You can not start with the technology and try to figure out where you going to try to sell it."

This 5min MBA is all you need to channel Steve Jobs’ spirit, pursue marketing strategically, and finally scale your business beyond a handful of users.

Now, let’s roll!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

DeGods = Taco Bell

Let's talk about Taco Bell.

In 2014, ESPN ran a Taco Bell ad instead of showing the drafting of Nikola Jokić, who just won the 2023 NBA Championship with the Denver Nuggets while claiming another MVP trophy.

Not bad for a European who has been drafted 41st overall.

This is a story about attention.

In the NBA Draft, most — if not all — attention is on the 1st round.

1st round picks receive lucrative contracts and are expected to go on to have legendary NBA careers. 2nd round picks are perceived as lottery tickets and mostly not given enough time on the court, even though they have what it takes to develop into great, if not extraordinary, NBA players.

When applying this framework to NFTs, we're experiencing something similar.

• 1st round picks are BAYC, Azuki, and DeGods/y00ts

• 2nd round picks are Opepen, Madlads and Claynosaurz

While 1st round picks are mostly flashy and expensive JPEGs, 2nd round picks leverage blockchain technology to push the space forward.

• Opepen: Holders are able to influence the art evolution of the NFTs within the collection through a dynamic mechanism, making Opepen a community-owned art project à la Nouns.

Purpose: Community + x; x = Dynamic Mechanism

• Madlads: The purpose of these NFTs is to create a community of power users and evangelists, which serves as a moat to allow the Backpack team to further expand on their OSS contributions.

Purpose: Community + x; x = Backpack

• Claynosaurz: The team used the NFT mint and subsequent royalties to bootstrap an iconic IP and lore. Further, Claynosaurz IP has been used for countless blockchain-centric IRL experiments/gamification. Up next: Hollywood.

Purpose: Community + x; x = Animation Studio With Holder Buy-In

All this is in stark contrast to 1st round picks: BAYC, Azuki, and DeGods/y00ts.

Sure, Yuga Labs is creating NFT-gated games. But if we're brutally honest, you don't need blockchains for that. And what have Azuki and DeGods/y00ts actually created?

A community?

Without the “x” factors discussed above?

That doesn't require permissionless networks.

Basically, both Azuki and DeGods/y00ts run a playbook.

And in the last couple of days, Frank and his DeGods/y00ts team executed their usual game plan to the tee:

• Hype clickbait with a side of psyops & delays

• Perpetual ponzis: stacking → tokens / points → exchange (merch, art upgrade etc.)

• Chain hopping from Solana to Polygon to Ethereum (hat-trick: ✅)

No one is better at running this operation.

It's an art, really — kudos.

And for all the people saying DeGods/y00ts are going to zero: As long as they're able to hack the news cycle and play the strings of the attention economy, they'll be fine.

To be fair, there's nothing wrong with that.

But attention is scarce.

And while BAYC, Azuki, and DeGods/y00ts are the Taco Bell ad in our awareness stream, it might be worth keeping an eye on Opepen, Madlads, and Claynosaurz as they might just be able to become the real back-to-back MVPs.

Spend your attention wisely and don't bet against the fat boys 🫡

Chart Of The Week

Contrary to popular belief, mSOL is still growing despite the introduction of Marinade Native.

News Bites

Fiat On-Ramp: Meso will soon allow users to seamlessly connect their bank accounts and cards to their crypto wallets with low fees.

Solana Chai: Chai, a ERC20 wrapper for DAI Savings Rate (DSR) — has landed on Solana. What is DSR? Well, basically T-bills — or liquid staked dollars 😂

Security, Finally! I've often mentioned the shortcomings of the security i.e auditing ecosystem, so I was stoked to learn that Spearbit raised $7M to build out Cantina, a marketplace for web3 security auditors. I hope that this will make auditing services and prices more transparent and the security scene on Solana more robust.

No-Code NFTs: The TipLink team has been cooking. Now, TipLink allows you to both design and mint NFTs for free — no wallet required.

Creator Rewards: DRiP rolled out creator rewards for artists. The rewards will be paid out by the DRiP Creator Fund, allowing content creators to get paid for every single collectible they sell — a bellwether for the compressed NFT space.

User Onboarding: As highlighted in our content flywheel spotlight, onboarding new users through different channels is paramount. Claynosaurz are doing just that by introducing their new TikTok channel, which seems to be pursuing a similar strategy as Pudgy Penguins’ Instagram account.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

If you'd like to reach me, respond to this newsletter or reach out to me on Twitter.

Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}